December 6, 2006
In Defense of Eric Foner II Posted by John Steele Gordon at 12:00 PM EST Joshua Zeitz takes me to task for writing that Eric Foner characterized the Mexican Cession as “egregious imperialism.” Mr. Zeitz is right, he did not, he characterized it as a land grab, which is not necessarily the same thing as imperialism. He writes, “Foner’s argument is not that the Mexican Cession was an example of brutal imperialism, but rather that it was a land grab initiated on a lie. He’s comparing George W. Bush’s spurious claims that Saddam Hussein had WMDs and ties to Al Qaeda to Polk’s claim, likely inaccurate or false, that Mexican forces had initiated an attack on American soil.” The causus belli in the Mexican War was that “Mexico has . . . shed American blood upon the American soil.” But that rested on the very dubious claim that Texas extended to the Rio Grande, not just to the Nueces River, the traditional southern boundary of Texas. But it was good enough for both President Polk and Congress, which voted to declare war, 174-14 in the House and 40-2 in the Senate. Polk knew perfectly well the shaky ground on which his request for a declaration of war rested. George W. Bush, relying on the judgment of every Western intelligence service from the CIA (the head of the CIA called it a “slam dunk”) to the Mossad, was not in any way misleading the Congress or the nation. To call Bush’s statements that Iraq had WMD’s a “lie” is itself a lie. And yet the “Bush lied” meme has been endlessly repeated and accepted by the left as holy writ. The difference between Polk and Bush is obvious to anyone who is interested in truth more than political advantage. He writes, “In an earlier post, Mr. Gordon snidely accused Foner of ‘historical malpractice,’ which is a little bit funny, as Foner, who is regarded as the leading scholar of Reconstruction, is a Bancroft Prize winner with a Ph.D. from Columbia University, where he studied with Richard Hofstadter and now holds a chair in history.” First, I didn’t “snidely” accuse Mr. Foner of anything. I accused him of historical malpractice in a forthright, honest way and gave my reasons for doing so. Second, this is a pure ad hominem argument. Does a Ph.D. and winning a Bancroft make one immune to criticism from anyone who lacks such ornaments on their curriculum vitae? If that is the case, then Michael Belleisles would still have his Bancroft for Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture, a book that turned out to be a tissue of lies and a case of deliberate historical malpractice of epic proportions.
He writes, “When Mr. Gordon wins his first Bancroft, he should feel free to judge Foner’s fidelity to the historical profession. Until then, he might want to feign a little more modesty.” I am not likely to win a Bancroft, usually given only to academic historians, but I will criticize anyone I think warrants criticism and give my reasons for doing so. If Mr. Zeitz doesn’t like that, I cheerfully invite him to lump it. To paraphrase Georges Clemenceau, history is too important to be left to a self-declared priesthood of academic historians. Mr. Foner made several historical references to buttress his argument that George Bush is the worst President in history. He argued that Bush, like President Polk, went to war for false reasons. But, see above, Polk knew his reasons were spurious and Bush had every reason to believe his were genuine. He decried the corruption of the Bush administration, comparing it to Warren Harding’s, when, in fact, it has been squeaky clean, and he ignored the far more corrupt Clinton administration, which corruption caused President Clinton himself to suffer severe legal sanctions. He decried Bush’s treatment of foreign terrorists, calling it a flagrant violation of rights the English-speaking people have held dear since Magna Carta, which is both false and nothing at all compared to Franklin Roosevelt’s treatment of native-born American citizens. As I wrote in my initial post, Eric Foner is a distinguished historian. I greatly admire his work on the Reconstruction era. But he is not one bit more equipped or entitled to discuss current-day politics than I or any other American citizen. I don’t care if he has Bancroft Awards lined up on his mantelpiece by the yard. The article I criticized was a work of politics, not history, and it misused history for political purposes.
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